OK, I am not sure if I can describe this simply but I will try but first let me 
describe
the symptoms of the result.

I am waiting for a CW Traffic net to get started on 80 meters tonight.  Just to 
make sure everything is hunky dory I give my paddle a two-dit hit so as to make 
sure SWR is OK and my meter reads the right power level.  But, this time, 
nothing.  While I am sitting there pondering what happened then there are two 
brief dits transmitted.  Big delay.  About 3 seconds I guess (did not have my 
watch ready so a guess).  So, I did this again, one dot, just one single dot.  
Nothing.  In fact, nothing at all, I waited about 10 seconds.  Then, I tried 
again and one dot comes out after about 2 seconds.

So, the symptoms are a delay in the keyer responding to my paddle.  I powered 
down the K3 and started it up again.  And this time, all functions work 
perfectly.  Paddle and Keyer are happy with each other.

Possible cause...

Just before I started this sequence described above, I started the K3 utility 
and mainly because I wanted to watch how the code translate does with the net 
participants.  I noticed that the K3 utility did not auto-start as usual and 
when I tried the comms port test it just timed out.  Yes, it was the correct 
port.  But, I ignored the K3 utility and then focused on the net which was 
starting and this is when all the trouble with the delay in the keyer happened.

After the net, I stopped the K3 Utility and restarted it and could not 
reproduce the problem.  This time, it came on up just fine without any issues.  
I am figuring some weird initialization process that got out of sync for the 
utility but I am not sure what happened to the K3 as this has never happened 
before.

And, I have no idea how to reproduce it but I am curious if anyone else has 
seen a similar problem where something my cause the firmware to maybe get into 
some state where the keyer is not getting any cpu time or not responding to 
interrupts or something resulting in a timing delay and thus the behavior I saw.

Curiosity only as everything works fine now.

System details:  K3 is up to date on all released firmware updates.  K3 utility 
is the latest version.  Computer is iMac running OS X (Mavericks version with 
all latest updates).

73, phil, K7PEH

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